Posts Tagged 'Internet'

“Forget about being a futurist, become a now-ist.” With those words, Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab, ends his most recent talk at TED. What thrills me the most is his encouragement to apply agile principles throughout any innovation process, and creating in the moment, building quickly and improving constantly is the story we’ve been advocating at SoftLayer for a long while.

Joi says that this new approach is possible thanks to the Internet. I actually want to take it further. Because the Internet has been around a lot longer than these agile principles, I argue that the real catalyst for the startups and technology disruptors we see nowadays was the widespread, affordable availability of cloud resources. The chance of deploying infrastructure on demand without long-term commitments, anywhere in the world, and with an option to scale it up and down on the fly decreased the cost of innovation dramatically. And fueling that innovation has always been raison d'être of SoftLayer.

Joi compares two innovation models: the before the Internet (I will go ahead and replace “Internet” with “cloud,” which I believe makes the case even stronger) and the new model. The world seemed to be much more structured before the cloud, governed by a certain set of rules and laws. When the cloud happened, it became very complex, low cost, and fast, with Newtonian rules being often defied.

Before, creating something new would cost millions of dollars. The process started with commercial minds, aka MBAs, who’d write a business plan, look for money to support it, and then hire designers and engineers to build the thing. Recently, this MBA-driven model has flipped: first designers and engineers build a thing, then they look for money from VCs or larger organizations, then they write a business plan, and then they move on to hiring MBAs.

A couple of months ago, I started to share this same observation more loudly. In the past, if an organization wanted to bring something new to the market, or just make iteration to the existing offering, it involved a lot of resources, from time, to people, to supporting infrastructure. Only a handful of ideas, after cumbersome fights with processes, budget restrictions, and people (and their egos), got to see the daylight. Change was a luxury.

Nowadays the creators are people who used to be in the shadows, mainly taking instructions from “management” and spinning the hamster wheel they were put on. Now, the “IT crowd” no longer sits in the basements of their offices. They are creating new revenue streams and becoming driving forces within their organizations, or they are rolling out their own businesses as startup founders. There is a whole new breed of technology entrepreneurs thriving on what the cloud offers.

Coming back to the TED talk, Joi brings great examples proving that this new designers/engineers-driven model has pushed innovation to the edges and beyond not only in software development, but also in manufacturing, medicine, and other disciplines. He describes bottom-up innovation as democratic, chaotic, and hard to control, where traditional rules don’t apply anymore. He replaces the demo-or-die motto with a new one: deploy or die, stating that you have to bring something to the real world for it to really count.

He walks us through the principles behind the new way of doing things, and for each of those, without any hesitation, I can add, “and that’s exactly what the cloud enables” as an ending to each statement:

Principle 1: Pull Over Push is about pulling the resources from the network as you need them, rather than stocking them in the center and controlling everything. And that’s exactly what the cloud enables.

Principle 2: Learning Over Education means drawing conclusions and learning on the go—not from static information, but by experimenting, testing things in real life, playing around with your idea, seeing what comes out of it, and applying the lessons moving forward. And that’s exactly what the cloud enables.

Principle 3: Compass Over Maps calls out the high cost of writing a plan or mapping the whole project, as it usually turns out not to be very accurate nor useful in the unpredictable world we live in. It’s better not to plan the whole thing with all the details ahead, but to know the direction you’re headed and leave yourself the freedom of flexibility, to adjust as you go, taking into account the changes resulting from each step. And that’s exactly what the cloud enables.

I dare to say that all the above is the true power of cloud without fluff, leaving you with an easy choice when facing the deploy-or-die dilemma.

The widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets has dramatically changed the way the world accesses the Internet recent years. Continued declines in smartphone cost will drive penetration even further into economies that have not had the buying power to join the Internet revolution. Over the next decade we'll see this market opportunity explode as these new users come on line. We are seeing the emergence of a new "middle class" being empowered by technology with the latest mobile applications and breakthroughs.

The power of the Internet resides in its ability to transcend borders. Application developers in Indonesia or Vietnam can happily find a virtual home selling into markets in North America without leaving the comfort of their sofas. Economic activity has been westward facing, serving the growing markets in developed nations with near universality of broadband access. Most consumers in developed countries have access to wireline broadband access (DSL, fiber, cable, etc.), while developing nations have suffered from under investment on this front. Much of this access has been driven by an economic imperative: Households in these markets demand fast connections, and they have the disposable income to pay for those connections. Conditions have not been the same in developing nations, but the world is changing.

According to the ITU, there were 4,000 broadband Internet users in Indonesia in 2000. In 2011, there are 2.7 million. The picture starts to get interesting when you consider smartphone penetration. An adsmobi report shows that Indonesia had an estimated 30.7-million smartphone users at the end of 2012, and that number is expected to nearly triple to 81.5 million by 2015. In the eleven-year span between 2000 to 2011, the number of smartphone users in Turkey went from zero to over 7 million. A year later in 2012, that number more than doubled to around 15 million — nearly 20% population penetration. This trend is playing itself out globally, the digital divide is getting smaller and the opportunity to provide service in these markets is getting larger.

What does that mean for you and your business online? You want to capitalize on these burgeoning markets and build your service or application to easily reach a global audience and scale to meet that audience's demand, but that's a pretty daunting task. You need to deliver a seamless experience to millions of users who live thousands of miles away and who may be accessing a completely different Internet than your users down the street.

The idea that large groups of users are accessing a "completely different Internet" may seem like an overly dramatic way to talk about their unique preferences and cultural/language differences, but I use that phrase very literally. As the global allocation of IPv4 addresses dwindles, Internet Service Providers will bring new users online via IPv6 addresses, and those users will only be able to access sites and applications that have IPv6 addresses. IPv6 addresses can run dual-stack with IPv4 addresses — the same content can be delivered via either protocol from the same server — but many legacy hosting providers haven't made the necessary upgrades to make every piece of network hardware IPv6-compatible.

As you consider the challenge of preparing for a global boom in users, keep these suggestions in mind:

Leverage a global infrastructure. You might not have the capital to build infrastructure around the world, so look for an IaaS partner that can provide resources in your targeted geographic markets. You need to be able to easily spin up IT resources where and when you need them to meet regional demand.

Get close to your end users. Proximity to customers and new markets is vital. You might not be able to host a server next door to every one of your users, but if you can get those users on your network quickly, they'll have the same kind of high-speed access to the content in your closest data center.

Don't pay too much. A simple pay-as-you-go service model helps the process of planning and growing strategically. You're able to focus on what you do best while avoiding the pitfalls of managing IT hardware.

Prepare for the future. Overarching technology concerns like the one I mentioned about IPv6 might not be very high on your list of priorities because they're just theoretical ... until they're not. By preparing for those future challenges, you'll save yourself a lot of grief when those "future" challenges eventually become "present" challenges.

SoftLayer has 13 data centers strategically located around the world, and we offer the same on-demand provisioning and month-to-month contracts in all of our facilities. We're continuing to build our network infrastructure to bring users onto our network via one of our network Points of Presence (PoPs) within 40 milliseconds from anywhere in the world. Our platform is IPv6-capable, and we have a team of people focused on finding and addressing future technological concerns before they impact our customers.

To find out more about how your business can go global with SoftLayer, check out our network overview and learn more about what differentiates SoftLayer's data centers from the competition's.

In January, we posted a series of blogs about legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate that would have had a serious impact on the hosting industry. We talked about SOPA and PIPA, and how those proposed laws would "break the Internet" as we know it. The hosting industry rallied together to oppose the passage of those bills, and in doing so, we proved to be a powerful collective force.

In the months that followed the shelving of SOPA and PIPA, many of the hosting companies that were active in the fight were invited to join a new coalition that would focus on proposed legislation that affects Internet infrastructure providers ... The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (or "i2Coalition") was born. i2Coalition co-founder and Board Chair Christian Dawson explains the basics:

SoftLayer is proud to be a Charter Member of i2Coalition, and we're excited to see how many vendors, partners, peers and competitors have joined us. Scrolling the ranks of founding members is a veritable "Who's who?" of the companies that make up the "nuts and bolts" of the Internet.

The goal of i2Coalition is to facilitate public policy education and advocacy, develop market-driven standards formed by consensus and give the industry a unified voice. On the i2Coalition's Public Policy page, that larger goal is broken down into focused priorities, with the first being

"In all public policy initiatives of the i2Coalition will be to encourage the growth and development of the Internet infrastructure industry and to protect the interests of members of the Coalition consistent with this development."

Another huge priority worth noting is the focus on enabling and promoting the free exercise of human rights — including freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the protection of personal privacy. Those rights are essential to fostering effective Internet advancement and to maintain a free and open Internet, and SoftLayer is a strong supporter of that platform.

If you operate in the hosting or Internet infrastructure space and you want to be part of the i2Coalition, we encourage you to become a member and join the conversation. When policymakers are talking about getting "an Internet" from their staff members, we know that there are plenty of opportunities to educate and provide context on the technical requirements and challenges that would result from proposed legislation, and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition is well equipped to capitalize on those opportunities.

At my house, we share a single iTunes account because as much as I hate to admit it ... I listen to the same music as my 11-year-old on occasion, so why buy the same music twice? I have my iPhone setup to automatically sync via any wireless connection, so I occasionally get new apps when someone else in the house downloads something.

Last week, my 8-year-old handed me his iPod and said, "Dad, can you enter the password so I can install BloodnGuns?" No way. He went through three or four reasons that he thought he needed the game, and I just went about my business. A couple of minutes later, he hands me the iPod again and says, "Dad, can you enter the password so I can install Temple Run?" Being a much tamer game, I said I would, but (knowing my son) I followed that up by saying, "Just remember: Anything you install goes to my iPhone, too." If I entered the password for him for Temple Run, he would be authenticated and could then get BloodnGuns, so I just wanted to remind him that I was born at night, not last night.

The sneaky little guy looked up to me and grinned, "Oh yea, 'cuz of that cloudamajigger thing."

Once I finished laughing, I asked him what he meant by Cloudamajigger, and before he could answer, I told him to wait ... I wanted to document how he would describe "The Cloud." With two other kids at home, I thought it might be an interesting focus group of the way kids are learning about technology, so I made it a family project.

I asked each of them three questions and told them to email their answers to me"

What is "The Cloud?"

Where does "The Cloud" live?

What is SoftLayer?

Here are the responses:

The 6-year-old

The cloud shoots out a ball and the cloud is awesome!

In the sky. It is made out of water.

Where dad works, I think he makes monitors.

The 8-year-old

It's a cloud in the sky and they shot a satellite in it. And they could see all the things you need to see on the internet.

See number 1 (Yes, he really typed that).

Where dad works, he works to make the Internet, and the Internet makes him work.

The 11-year-old

It is a group of people where when you post something everyone will be able to see it.

I don't know.

A company.

You can see that the 11-year-old is darn close to those wonderful teenage years with that loquacious participation ... Wish me luck!

I ask these same questions of people at conferences I attend and get generally the same answers as above. We can write reams of descriptions of the cloud, but in my world, it's simply "The Cloudamajigger Thing."

I've always enjoyed SNL's satirization of those infomercials where a guy is slightly inconvenienced by a product that just doesn't seem to work to his satisfaction. As a result, it shows him getting frustrated and pulling his hair out ... But it doesn't stop there. He then gets into his vehicle, drives recklessly down the one-way street going the wrong way and ultimately crashes into a cable tower, knocking out the "big game" for the whole town. Of course, this causes a riot among the angry football fans who then ravage the whole town. Havoc is wreaked because this guy was using a standard toothbrush instead of the all new, Electric Brush-a-thon 2100.

The funny thing is, I don't think SNL is too far off on how these infomercials represent real life. I can't help but think of these parodies when I think about the effects that SOPA would have had if it passed as law:

The first business to die a slow, horrible and expensive death as a result of the legislation might have been Google. Because it's connected to virtually every website on the planet (legitimate and non-legitimate alike), the amount of time spent severing connections to sites in any way related to a site that was merely assumed to be performing illegal activities would stall Google's growth and innovation endeavors. This would cause thousands of people to lose their jobs ... And it's not out of the question to think one or two of those people might start a riot.

Small- and medium-sized businesses would not have escaped the legislation ... Theoretically, a single anonymous comment that linked to a site with pirated versions of Pirates of the Caribbean (*fitting title as an example*) would make that site subject to being shut down if proper actions weren't taken. All these innovative companies would spend their time playing big brother instead of creating the next new technology that will make our lives easier (or at least more fun) ... And along with stifling innovation, don't forget the riots.

To wrap up our "what if" scenario, we'd have Google failing and SMBs going out of business. The Internet would become a wasteland, and it would be like World War 10 in the streets (we skipped 3 through 9 because all of these riots would make the resulting "war" so momentous).

How's that for a satirical worst-case scenario?

I bring this up in the wake of SOPA and PIPA being tabled because the legislators who proposed those controversial bills merely stopped pursuing their goals in the form of those bills ... We can't let the idea that "we've won the battle" distract us from potentially losing the war.

Many technology companies, including Google and Wikipedia, publicly spoke out against this bill by "blacking out" their sites. Due to all the negative responses from the tech community, the bills' sponsors in Congress decided they didn't want the blood from World War 10 on their hands.

We need to continue the momentum from the Internet's response to SOPA and PIPA — not only to pay attention to attempts at similar legislation in the future but also to proactively help create and shape laws that protect intellectual property and copyright holders.

Also, anything we can collectively do to prevent riots in the streets is a good thing. :-)

The Internet community's rallying cry has been heard by the United States Congress and Senate. Last week, we reported that SOPA was temporarily being put on the shelf, but now Congressman Lamar Smith has pulled the bill altogether, stating that "until there is wider agreement on a solution," the bill will not be reintroduced.

On the Protect IP Act (PIPA) front, Senator Harry Reid also announced late last week that he's postponed the schedule vote on the legislation that was originally slated for today. In a statement released on Friday, Senator Reid went on to say:

"There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio."

As a hosting provider, we wholeheartedly agree that counterfeiting and piracy are a primary focus, and our opposition to the bills drafted to protect copyright holders and intellectual property owners is in response to the verbiage in the legislation and the potential dangers in the proposed means of enforcement. Having SOPA pulled and PIPA put on the shelf is an important step, but it's not exactly a time to celebrate. The Internet community needs to remain vigilant and engaged with Congress to help create legislation that reinforces the freedom of the Internet and protects the rights of intellectual property owners.

These bills have not been forgotten by the members who introduced them for consideration and vote, and they will likely evolve into new proposals with the same intent.

Our legal team and management team will maintain our steadfast opposition to these two bills in their current form, and as similar legislation is proposed, we will fill you in on what's being considered. In the meantime, take a few minutes to visit http://savehosting.org/ and TechAmerica to learn more about what our industry is concerned about.

The Internet is unnervingly quiet today. In response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate, some of the most popular sites on the web have gone dark today – demonstrating the danger (and the potential unchecked power) of these two bills.

The Internet was abuzz ... but the Champagne wasn't getting popped yet. After digging into the details, it was revealed that SOPA being "shelved" just meant that it is being temporarily put to sleep. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith stood explained:

"To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members to find ways to combat online piracy.

Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February."

I only mention this because it's important not to forget that SOPA isn't dead, and it's still very dangerous. If you visit sites like reddit, Wikipedia, Mozilla and Boing Boing today (January 18, 2012), you experience the potential impact of the legislation.

The Internet's outrage against SOPA has brought about real change in our nation's capital: The House is reconsidering the bill, and they'll hopefully dismiss it. With our collective momentum, we need to look at the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA, or Senate Bill 968) – a similar bill with similarly harmful implications that's been sneaking around in SOPA's shadow.

As it is defined today, PIPA has a stated goal of providing the US Government and copyright holders an additional arsenal of tools to aide in taking down 'rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods.' The Senate bill details that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order." In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending "Internet site."

Our opposition to PIPA is nearly identical to our opposition to SOPA. Both require a form of essentially breaking a core aspect of how the Internet functions – whether that breakage happens in DNS (as detailed in my last blog post) or in the required rearchitecture of the way any site that accepts user-generated content has to respond to PIPA-related complaints.

PIPA is scheduled for Senate vote on January 24, 2012. It is important that you voice your opinion with your government representatives and let them know about your opposition to both SOPA and PIPA. We want to help you get started down that path. Find your local representatives' contact information:

Last week, I explained SoftLayer's stance against SOPA and mentioned that SOPA would essentially require service providers like SoftLayer to "break the Internet" in response to reports of "infringing sites." The technical readers in our audience probably acknowledged the point and moved on, but our non-technical readers (and some representatives in Congress) might have gotten a little confused by the references to DNS, domains and IP addresses.

Given how pervasive the Internet is in our daily lives, you shouldn't need to be "a techie" to understand the basics of what makes the Internet work ... And given the significance of the SOPA legislation, you should understand where the bill would "break" the process. Let's take a high level look at how the Internet works, and from there, we can contrast how it would work if SOPA were to pass.

The Internet: How Sites Are Delivered

You access a device connected in some way to the Internet. This device can be a cell phone, a computer or even a refrigerator. You are connected to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which recognizes that you will be accessing various sites and services hosted remotely. Your ISP manages a network connected to the other networks around the globe ("inter" "network" ... "Internet").

You enter a domain name or click a URL (for this example, we'll use http://www.softlayer.com since we're biased to that site).

Your ISP will see that you want to access "www.softlayer.com" and will immediately try to find someone/something that knows what "www.softlayer.com" means ... This search is known as an NS (name server) lookup. In this case, it will find that "www.softlayer.com" is associated with several name servers.

The first of these four name servers to respond with additional information about "softlayer.com" will be used. Domains are typically required to be associated with two or three name servers to ensure if one is unreachable, requests for that domain name can be processed by another.

The name server has Domain Name System (DNS) information that maps "www.softlayer.com" to an Internet Protocol (IP) address. When a domain name is purchased and provisioned, the owner will associate that domain name with an authoritative DNS name server, and a DNS record will be created with that name server linking the domain to a specific IP address. Think of DNS as a phone book that translates a name into a phone number for you.

When the IP address you reach sees that you requested "www.softlayer.com," it will find the files/content associated with that request. Multiple domains can be hosted on the same IP address, just as multiple people can live at the same street address and answer the phone. Each IP address only exists in a single place at a given time. (There are some complex network tricks that can negate that statement, but in the interest of simplicity, we'll ignore them.)

When the requested content is located (and generated by other servers if necessary), it is returned to your browser. Depending on what content you are accessing, the response from the server can be very simple or very complex. In some cases, the request will return a single HTML document. In other cases, the content you access may require additional information from other servers (database servers, storage servers, etc.) before the request can be completely fulfilled. In this case, we get HTML code in return.

Your browser takes that code and translates the formatting and content to be displayed on your screen. Often, formatting and styling of pages will be generated from a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) referenced in the HTML code. The purpose of the style sheet is to streamline a given page's code and consolidate the formatting to be used and referenced by multiple pages of a given website.

The HTML code will reference sources for media that may be hosted on other servers, so the browser will perform the necessary additional requests to get all of the media the website is trying to show. In this case, the most noticeable image that will get pulled is the SoftLayer logo from this location: http://static2.softlayer.com/images/layout/logo.jpg

When the HTML is rendered and the media is loaded, your browser will probably note that it is "Done," and you will have successfully navigated to SoftLayer's homepage.

If SOPA were to pass, the process would look like this:

The Internet: Post-SOPA

You access a device connected in some way to the Internet.

You enter a domain name or click a URL (for this example, we'll use http://www.softlayer.com since we're biased to that site).

*The Change*

Before your ISP runs an NS lookup, it would have to determine whether the site you're trying to access has been reported as an "infringing site." If http://www.softlayer.com was reported (either legitimately or illegitimately) as an infringing site, your ISP would not process your request, and you'd proceed to an error page. If your ISP can't find any reference to the domain an infringing site, it would start looking for the name server to deliver the IP address.

SOPA would also enforce filtering from all authoritative DNS provider. If an ISP sends a request for an infringing site to the name server for that site, the provider of that name server would be forced to prevent the IP address from being returned.

One additional method of screening domains would happen at the level of the operator of the domain's gTLD. gTLDs (generic top-level domains) are the ".____" at the end of the domain (.com, .net, .biz, etc.). Each gTLD is managed by a large registry organization, and a gTLD's operator would be required to prevent an infringing site's domain from functioning properly.

If the gTLD registry operator, your ISP and the domain's authoritative name server provider agree that the site you're accessing has not been reported as an infringing site, the process would resume the pre-SOPA process.

The proponents of SOPA are basically saying, "It's difficult for us to keep up with and shut down all of the instances of counterfeiting and copyright infringement online, but it would be much easier to target the larger sites/providers 'enabling' users to access that (possible) infringement." Right now, the DMCA process requires a formal copyright complaint to be filed for every instance of infringement, and the providers who are hosting the content on their network are responsible for having that content removed. That's what our abuse team does full-time. It's a relatively complex process, but it's a process that guarantees us the ability to investigate claims for legitimacy and to hear from our customers (who hear from their customers) in response to the claims.

SOPA does not allow for due process to investigate concerns. If a site is reported to be an infringing site, service providers have to do everything in their power to prevent users from getting there.

Let's say there are 2495 miles separating me and the world's foremost authority on orthopedics who lives in Vancouver, Canada. If I needed some medical advice for how to remove a screwdriver from the palm of my hand that was the result of a a Christmas toy with "some assembly required," I'd be pretty happy I live in the year 2011. Here are a few of the communication methods that I may have settled with in years past:

On Foot: The average human walks 3.5 mph sustainable. Using this method it would take a messenger 29.7 days to get a description of the problem and a drawing of the damage to that doctor if the messenger walked non-stop. Because the doctor in this theoretical scenario is the only person on the planet who knows how to perform the screwdriver removal surgery, the doctor would have to accompany the messenger back to Texas, and I am fairly sure by the time they arrived, they'd have to visit a grave with a terrible epitaph like "He got screwed," or they'd find me answering to a crass nickname like "Stumpy."

On Horseback: The average speed of a galloping horse is around 30 mph sustainable, so with the help of a couple equestrian friends, the message could reach the doctor in 3.5 days if the horse were to run the whole journey without stopping, the doctor could saddle up and hit the trail back to Houston, getting here in about 7 days. In that span of time, I'd only be able to wave to him with one hand, given the inevitable amputation.

Via High-Speed Rail: With an average speed of 101 mph, it would take a mere 24.7 hour to get from Houston to Vancouver, so if this means of communication were the only one used, I could have the doctor at my bedside in a little over 48 hours. That turnaround time might mean my hand would be saved, but the delay would still yield a terrible headache and a lot of embarrassment ... Seeing as how a screwdriver in your hand is relatively noticeable at Christmas parties.

Via Commercial Flight: If the message was taken by plane and the doctor returned by plane, the round trip would be around 12.4 hours at an average rate of 400 mph ... I'd only have to endure half a day of mockery.

Via E-mail: With the multimedia capabilities of email, the doctor could be sent a picture of the damage instantly and a surgeon in Houston could be instructed on how to best save my hand. There would be little delay, but there are no guarantees that the stand-in surgeon would be able to correctly execute on the instructions given by this theoretical world's only orthopedic surgeon.

Via Video Chat: In milliseconds, a video connection could be made between the stand-in surgeon and the orthopedic specialist. The specialist could watch and instruct the stand-in surgeon on how to complete the surgery, and I'd be using both hands again by Christmas morning. Technology is also getting to a point where the specialist could perform parts of the surgery remotely ... Let's just hope they use a good network connection on both end since any latency would be pretty significant.

I started thinking about the amazing speed with which we access information when I met with CTO Duke Skarda. He gave a few examples of our customers that piqued his interested, given to the innovative nature of their business, and one in particular made me realize how far we've come when I considered the availability and speed of our access to information:

The company facilitated advertisements on the Internet by customizing the advertising experience to each visitor by auctioning off ad space to companies that fit that particular visitor's profile. In the simplest sense, a website has a blank area for an advertisment, the site sends non-sensitive information about the visitor to an advertising network. The advertising network then distributes that information to multiple advertisers who process it, generate targeted ads and place a bid to "purchase" the space for that visitor. The winner of the auction is determined, and the winner's ad would be populated on the website.

All of this is done in under a second, before the visitor even knows the process took place.

We live in a time of instant access. We are only limited by the speed of light, a blazing 186,282.4 miles/second. That means you could, theoretically, send a message around the world in .03 milliseconds. Businesses use this speed to create and market products and services to the global market, I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds ... Maybe some kind of technology that prevents screwdrivers from piercing hands?

As a video gaming and movie addict, I've always followed the latest trends and news in these two areas. Because there always seems to be some "breaking news" every day due to technology advancing so rapidly, sometimes it's tough to keep up.

In gaming, I remember it all started for me back when my parents decided to buy me the first Nintendo console. Pointing that light sensor gun at unsuspecting ducks and watching them fall was all the rage ... It marked a big step in the evolution of home gaming. What initially seemed like a good investment to keep me out of trouble soon turned into a headache for my parents. I frequently begged for more games, and they were not cheap. Look at how much new video games cost these days, and you'll see that not much has changed in that regard. The fire to play all the latest games was never extinguished, so a chunk of my income was always earmarked for the next amazing game I needed.

As for movies, I also found myself collecting as many as possible to rewatch whenever I choose. While each individual movie didn't cost as much as a video game, the aggregate costs definitely built up over time. My family and friends warned me that my "extravagant lifestyle" is reserved for the rich and would only lead me to financial ruin.

Fast forward to today, and I can say that I've learned a lot and found ways to sustainably feed my addiction without driving myself to financial ruin. How is it possible that I am able to live like a king without breaking the bank? It's all thanks to content streaming, made possible by the Internet. I no longer have to buy every single game to have the ability to play whenever I feel like it with services like OnLive that actually streams numerous games to my TV (and a few other supported devices). Beyond the fact that I save money by not buying the game, I don't even need the latest computer hardware to play the more graphics-intensive games like Crysis:

You might not be familiar with OnLive just yet, but most people know about content steaming from companies like Netflix and Amazon. You can stream countless movies to your devices to watch movies on demand for a monthly fee or on a per-movie basis. With these services readily available, it's possible for just about anyone have the "kid in the candy store" experience of pulling up essentially any content whenever we want to watch or play.

If either form of entertainment appeals to you, you can agree that our quality of life has improved over time significantly. The streaming services provided by companies like Netflix and OnLive have really taken advantage of the technological capabilities offered by high speed Internet, which also reminds us of the significance of web hosting. To offer customers complete satisfaction, deciding which web hosting company to go with for a business is often a very difficult decision, especially since there are so many out there. It would make complete business sense to find an extremely reliable company to ensure the success of such services and having worked in the industry, and I can assure you with much pride that SoftLayer certainly shines in this area.

As an employee, I see how we're building our network to provide the best experience around the world, and if there's ever a problem, we treat all outages with extreme urgency. Customers get better turnaround times, and they can provide better service for their customers. If some content streaming were to become unavailable, it wouldn't be long before it became available again.

It's pretty safe to say that the Internet has spoiled me ... Now all I need is a crown.